


Memories that i'd black out if you were mine

by cliffordxcolors



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Lashton - Freeform, Luke's dad is a dick, M/M, Sad Luke, barley any lashton in the first part, no michael or calum in the first part either, not edited oops, smut in the second part what, the ending will be happy for once don't worry, this sucks don't read it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-20 10:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2425514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliffordxcolors/pseuds/cliffordxcolors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Drunken words would be thrown his way, nasty insults and incoherent sentences, chipping away little by little what was left of his happiness. Luke decided then that he hated this man more than he thought he did. He hated how the man would be sitting on the couch, where his mother used to sit, permeating the air with his awful words and alcohol, pushing what was left of the warmth of his mother out the door. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(Or, Luke can't wait until his past is nothing but a memory.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories that i'd black out if you were mine

**Author's Note:**

> This is awful, i'm sorry. 
> 
>  
> 
> This was originally going to be a really long one shot but I had so much I wanted to put in it so I'm going to separate it into two maybe three parts. The next part will be up within a couple weeks :)
> 
> (The title is from Collar Full by Panic! At The Disco and the song Luke sings is Sweet Baby James by James Taylor.)

For 18 years, Luke didn't really understand _why_ he was on the earth. He knew that everyone had a purpose, but after almost two decades, he still didn't know what his was. He wasn't an amazing sports player, (he kept tripping over his own feet when he tried playing football when he was about five, and even the fucking coach said that maybe sports wasn't his calling). And he wasn't especially great in school, either. 

All he has is music. Well, had. 

He use to have a beautiful guitar, one of the prettiest he had ever seen. He remembers how that was the best Christmas ever, and how he loved that guitar more than he loved himself, but not more than he loved his mom, because she had remembered everything he ever told her about guitars, and how she went and bought the exact one Luke would look at with heart eyes whenever he walked past the small music store, and how little 15 year old Luke's eyes went wide when he opened the case, and how he flung himself at his mother, a string of thank you's falling from his mouth like a mantra. 

Now, Luke barley plays his guitar. The wood was cracked and the strings were broken, and it sat sadly in the corner of Luke's bedroom, a painful reminder of how everything had gone to shit, and how much he fucking hated himself for it. Occasionally, he would pluck the single string that managed to stay on, and the out of tune noise would feel like knives cutting up his insides, because that broken instrument used to be so fucking beautiful, and all Luke wanted was to go back in time, back to when he would sit on the couch with his mom as she would request songs for Luke to sing and play on his guitar. They were some of Luke's best memories.

Luke remembers at his mom's funeral, he had brought his guitar and after the painful service, after they lowered his best friend into the rock-hard ground, and for the first time, Luke wished that he could be swallowed by the snow-covered ground, to disappear.

Luke remembers falling to his knees in the snow next to his mother's grave, the snow soaking through his black suit, but Luke was already too numb to feel the cold, so why should he care? He was holding his guitar with shaking hands and numb fingers, and he craved the motherly warmth of the body that was six feet under him, and being so far away from her right now felt so _wrong_. There was a lump in his throat that took what felt like years to clear, and he started singing the song that his mother sang to him for many years with his shaking voice, and he started strumming his guitar with his numb fingers.

_There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway_  
 _A song that they sing when they take to the sea_  
 _A song that they sing of their home in the sky_  
 _Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep_  
 _But singing works just fine for me_

And suddenly it all felt so _wrong_.

It felt wrong that he able to sing his mother's favorite song and breathe through working lungs and his mother was _dead_.

So Luke got up and trudged through the snow back to the house where he spent sixteen happy years with his mother. There was snow puddled in his shoes and soaked through his pants, and Luke now felt numb in more than one way.

He remembers seeing a boy with sandy, curly hair while he moped through snow, and the boy smiled at him. Luke remembers being annoyed because, how could someone look so happy? How could someone smile so big, when this world is such a fucking awful place? 

All Luke could think of as he walked further away from the curly-haired boy, was that his smile was probably warm enough to melt all of the snow.

\--

Luke didn't know what he was expecting when he walked back into the house that was filled with ghosts of his mother, everything she left behind. _If only he hadn't been so desperate to talk to her. If only she hadn't taken her eyes off the road._ Maybe he was expecting the broken glass of water still scattered all over the kitchen floor, which he dropped when he got the call from the hospital, and didn't bother to clean it up after several days. Maybe he expected to see his mother sleeping on the couch, or sitting at the small kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a magazine about things she couldn't care less about. 

But, no.

There was no shattered glass on the floor, and the couch was as empty as Luke felt inside, and the unfinished cup of coffee that was still sitting on the counter was cold and Luke remembered how much his mother hated cold coffee and he had the sudden urge to throw the mug on the ground, wanting to shatter it. He was hoping in some impossible way that he could go back in time to when he shattered the cup of cold water. He almost threw the mug, until he heard feet coming down the steps and he froze because... _mom?_

It was quite the opposite of his mother. 

His mother warm, soft, and comforting, and she gave the kind of hugs that felt like you were being wrapped in so much _love_ and how everything would feel _alright_. Tears crept into Luke's eyes at the thought that he would never get to feel those hugs again. 

What Luke saw come into the kitchen was a cold figure, all sharp edges and suddenly memories of back when he was little, and he would sit in his room and listen to his mother yelling at the man that was supposed to be his father. The man that left them with nothing, and took everything. The man that haunted his mother's dreams and _no_ Luke didn't want this, didn't need this, right now. 

"Lucas." The man's voice was like ice, and it cut through the air like a blade and suddenly the collar on Luke's dress shirt felt too tight, and the feeling in his legs was coming back unwelcomed, and Luke felt like he was suffocating. He wanted to be numb again, wanted to be kneeling in the snow, even if his body was being bitten by the cold, and he lost the feeling in his toes. He wanted his mom, he fucking needed her. 

"I-it's Luke." he stuttered, leaning his guitar against the kitchen counter and gripped the mug tighter. He had the overwhelming urge to throw it at this man, who was supposedly his dad, but Luke would never, could never, call him that.

"You're all grown up."

"T-that's what happens when you leave your wife and kid for over ten years." Luke tried to say that with confidence, but it came out squeaky and his "dad" let out a small laugh.

"Well, I'm here now."

"She's dead. You only care because she's fucking dead." Luke's knuckles turned white, gripping the mug tightly. He wanted to break it. To break something. He needed to get out.

And somewhere between that moment and Luke running out the door, he threw the mug of cold coffee at the familiar stranger, only to miss and stain the wall with coffee and litter the ground with the pieces of the mug that he had sloppily painted for his mom in art class.

\--

If you asked Ashton why he liked to go for long walks in the snow, while the cold air harshly blew around him, and the snow would dampen the ends of his pants, he wouldn't really have an answer. There was something so beautiful about how everything was painted a glistening white, how everything was so peaceful and there were no cars on the roads because the ice was brutal. There was something about the icicles hanging from every building that Ashton loved.

It was also pretty interesting by how much you could tell about somehow by how they walk in the snow. 

The cold didn't really ever bother Ashton, so he always looked content, his tanned cheeks tinted with pink and the cold wind weaving through his curly hair. He would rarely see people like himself walking around the town on his daily walk, where he would sit on benches and play a game with himself where he would see how much he can guess about someone just by the 10 or so seconds they spent walking past him. 

He rarely saw tall boys in suits, the pants soaked and clinging to their legs, shaking hands carrying a guitar, with messed up blonde hair. Ashton wished he did, though. This was more interesting than the tired parents that would be getting dragged to the playground by their enthusiastic, bundled-up children, because let's be honest, playgrounds with snow on them are the best. 

The boy looked up briefly, and Ashton flashed a smile, hoping to see how stunning the pretty boy's smile was, but the blonde frantically looked down again. Ashton was confused as to why this boy was soaking wet, dressed in a suit, carrying a guitar. 

Until he looked in the direction the boy was walking from and- _oh._

\--

When Luke was seventeen, he longed to be sixteen again, even if it meant going through all that shit again. Anything was better than the hell his life had become in the past two years. 

A week after the suffocating encounter with his father, the man had moved into the house, since he was Luke's legal guardian now. Everything was happening so quickly, and all he wanted was to melt along with all the snow on the ground, to disappear. 

He and his "father" had ignored each other the first week, and then Luke turned seventeen. 

It was the first year he hadn't woken up to a smiling face and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes spreading through the house on his birthday. It all felt so goddamn wrong. He was living, growing up, without his mother.

And a few weeks later, Luke started to come home to the smell of alcohol, a bitter scent, not even close to pancakes.

Drunken words would be thrown his way, nasty insults and incoherent sentences, chipping away little by little what was left of his happiness. Luke decided then that he hated this man more than he thought he did. He hated how the man would be sitting on the couch, where his mother used to sit, permeating the air with his awful words and alcohol, pushing what was left of the warmth of Luke's mother out the door. 

Luke remembered thinking that if words were slaps to the face, he would be black and blue.

\--

Luke was almost eighteen and he decided that he deserved this. Maybe he deserved coming home everyday to the sickening smell of alcohol, and the harsh words and his father's new favorite activity, hitting Luke. Maybe all of this really was his fault. 

Maybe he deserved his guitar to be broken right in front of him. Maybe he deserved to hear the wood crack and the sound of the strings vibrating as his father hit Luke with it. He fucking deserved the guitar that held so many memories of his mother to be destroyed, and left to be forgotten on the kitchen tile. (Luke snuck downstairs that night and collected the destroyed instrument, and put it in his room, where it now sat sadly in the dark corner of his room.) 

Luke knew he deserved the colors black and blue and purple to litter his skin, knew that he deserved every hit, kick, punch, and every word that broke past his skin and chipped away what was left of him. He was numb in so many ways. 

\--

School was ending, and that was the one hope Luke had. He planned to go to college in a city far away from this town filled with so many ghosts. He was going to escape, leave his father and never look back.

And Luke got accepted into a school three and a half hours away from where he currently was, and Luke genuinely smiled for the first time in years. Every beating he got, he took like a champ, and he would smile at the fact that he was leaving very soon, and he didn't even tell his dad. He decided he would leave during the night, take a bus to the school and never see that man again. Nothing could stop him. Nothing would stop him. 

\--

The last week of school was a blur

He got all the grades he was expecting, barley passing every class besides English and music. 

But, as Luke walked out of the building he spent four years of his life in, four years of thinking how when people say high school is "the best four years of your life," is complete and utter bullshit, he felt a weight crash off of his shoulders. He felt numb, in a good way, and his fingers and toes tingled and he couldn't even feel the marks his dad left with a belt on his back last night. Luke smiled, and he remembered how great it felt, and he looked up at the clear blue sky, at the sun that felt like a spotlight, and he laughed. He was laughing, and he probably looked mental, and he ran down the sidewalk, discarding his graduation robe somewhere behind him, and he ran straight past his house and straight past the park, and he ran and ran and he had so much adrenaline and he felt like nothing could touch him ever. 

He ran for who-knows-how-long and he got so many odd looks from people, and soon he ran straight through the gate to the cemetery.

He stopped abruptly at his mother's grave, the first time he ever smiled while in this ghostly place. 

"Mom-" Luke was panting, his energy going down as he sat in front of his mother.

"Mom, I-I did it. I graduated." 

The smile never left his face and he sat with his mom until it got dark, imagining her sparkling blue eyes that she gave to him.


End file.
